"P. N. Elrod - Jonathan Barrett 01 - Red Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elrod P N)

d I had to work hard at getting him out of there.
"Sorry, old man," I told him. "You may have an excellent bloodline, but I d
on't think Mr. Finch would thank you for passing it on through his mares."
He stamped and tried to rear, but I pulled him in, not letting him get away wi
th it.
"If it's any consolation, I know just how you feel," 1 confided.
I was seventeen and still a virgin ... of sorts. I'd long since worked out
ways around certain inevitable frustrations that come from being a healthy
young man, but instinctively knew they could hardly be as gratifying as act
ual experience with an equally healthy young woman. Damn. Now, why did I ha
ve to start thinking along those paths again? An idiotic question; better t
o frame it as a syllogism of logic. Premise one: I was, indeed, healthy; pr
emise two: I was, indeed, young. Combine those and I rarely failed to come
to a pleasurable conclusion. However, I was not prepared to come to any suc
h conclusions here in the open while on horseback. Talk about doing somethi
ng to garner maternal disapproval. . . and I'd probably fall out of the saddle.
The true loss of my virginity was another goal in my personal education I'd
planned to achieve at Harvard—if I ever got there, since Mother had said tha
t everything was settled about Cambridge. I wondered if they had girls at Ca
mbridge. Oh, God, this wasn't helping at all. I kicked Roily into a jarring
trot, hoping that it would distract me. The last thing I needed was to retur
n home with any telltale stain on my light-colored
breeches. Perhaps if I found a quiet spot in the woods ...
I knew just the one.
As children, Elizabeth, Jericho, and I had gone adventuring, or what we call
ed adventuring, for we really knew the area quite well. Usually our games in
volved a treasure hunt, for everyone on the island knew that Captain Kidd ha
d come here to bury his booty. It didn't matter to us that such riches were
more likely to be fifty miles east of us on the south end of the island; the
hunting was more important than the finding. But instead of treasure that d
ay, I'd found a kettle, or a sharpish depression gouged into the earth by so
me ancient glacier, according to my schoolmaster. Trees and other vegetation
concealed its edge. My foot slipped on some wet leaves and down I tumbled i
nto a typical specimen of Long Island's geography.
Jericho came pelting after me, fearful that I had broken my neck. Elizabeth
, though hampered by her skirts, followed almost as quickly, shouting tear-
choked questions after him. I was almost trampled by their combined concern
and inability to stop fast enough.
The wind had certainly been knocked from me, but I'd suffered nothing worse
than some scrapes and bruises. After that initial fright passed we took stoc
k of our surroundings and claimed it for our own. It became our pirate's cav
e (albeit open to the sky and to any cattle that wandered in to graze), band
itti's lair, and general sanctuary from tiresome adults wanting us to do som
ething more constructive with our time.
Now it seemed that it was still a sanctuary, not from adults, but for adult
s. Just as I'd guided Roily down to the easy way into the kettle, I noticed
two people far ahead near the line of trees marking the entry. A man and w
oman walked arm in arm there, obviously on the friendliest of terms. Even a
t that distance I abruptly recognized my father. The woman with him was Mrs
. Montagu. She was a sweet-faced, sweet-tempered widow who had always been